TUCSON, Ariz.—They met on a Friday afternoon following an Arizona practice that probably was more necessary than every one that preceded in the 2012-13 basketball season, and perhaps every one that would follow. The contents of their conversation were not audible beyond the boundary of coach Sean Miller’s office door, so that was a good sign.

“I just told him: Have no regrets,” Miller said.

Him: Mark Lyons, a transfer from upstate New York who arrived at Arizona this fall with a degree from Xavier that freed him to play immediately for the Wildcats, a shooting guard’s mentality and a reputation as a challenge to coach. And Miller has needed him to be a point guard, the position the coach played so masterfully during four seasons at Pitt.

The problem that became obvious during the prior night’s devastating loss to UCLA, however, really involved none of these issues. Miller knew Lyons (6-1, 200), has played three seasons for the Musketeers with limited exposure to the point guard position. Lyons handles the ball well enough and has a point’s quickness, but he is used to looking for scoring opportunities first.

His coaches do what they can to teach him the importance of looking to pass in certain circumstances, but mostly they work to scheme around this trait.

Lyons has not been terribly difficult for Miller to coach. They’ve had “just a few” moments when they were at odds, Miller said. “He’s older now. He knows he has a lot at stake. So he’s not going down that path a whole lot.”

What has been the greatest challenge, honestly, has been traveling from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Playing for Xavier in the Atlantic 10 Conference, Lyons faced many terrific opponents: Temple’s Ramone Moore, Richmond’s David Gonzalvez, Rhode Island’s Billy Baron, and of course he saw plenty of Cincinnati’s Sean Kilpatrick in the Crosstown Shootout. But in between the challenges were many A-10 games in which the opposition was dubious enough Lyons only needed to be average in order to be good.

It isn’t like that in the Pac-12, particularly at his position. When he faced UCLA’s Larry Drew II last week, Lyons was the reigning conference player of the week for scoring 24 in a showdown with Arizona State’s magnificent Jahii Carson.

“He did his thing,” Miller told Sporting News. “He was tough, he scored, made big plays at the end. And he really defended, because it was personal. And then a couple days go by and there’s another guy waiting and a great team waiting.”

Drew came to Tucson and wrecked Lyons, dominating the game with nine assists and only two turnovers while Lyons shot 6-of-17 from the field and gave up the ball five times.

Think about the sequence of point guards Lyons faced in the four-game stretch that concluded with Thursday’s 57-53 victory at Washington, a venue where Miller and seniors Solomon Hill and Kevin Parrom had never won: Carson, Drew, USC’s Jio Fontan and UW’s Abdul Gaddy.

“He’s got to be on it every game,” Miller said. “There are pros just about everywhere. It’s the grind of the preparation. You mess around leading into each game, and they’ll get the best of you.

“It’s that every-game level that has him thrown off right now.”

It is important to note that when that sequence concluded, the Wildcats had gone 3-1, even though two of the games were on the road. Lyons did not shoot 40 percent in any of the last three games, but he hit three times from 3-point range in the USC game and made some essential plays against Washington, such as helping to force six turnovers from Gaddy and a layup with 4:02 left to tie the score at 48.

Miller would like to see Lyons be more efficient and less casual with the ball, but he showed the sort of competitiveness against the Huskies that will be necessary for the No. 8 Wildcats (18-2, 6-2) to accelerate their pursuit of a prominent NCAA Tournament seed and a Pac-12 championship. They next play Saturday at 10th-place Washington State (11-10, 2-6) on the Pac-12 Network.

Arizona is in a curious position. The Wildcats have been drastically less efficient and productive in Pac-12 play than they were in the non-conference part of the schedule. But they’ve continued to win, affirming in victories over Colorado, Utah and Washington the willingness to scramble back into games that was revealed in a stunning recovery against Florida.

Miller would rather they simply play better, and he says Lyons is the key and that daily concentration and focus are the key to Lyons’ improvement.

The Wildcats have three freshman big men who eventually will be excellent pro prospects, but no one among the trio of Kaleb Tarczewski, Brandon Ashley and Grant Jerrett has established a consistent physical presence or demonstrated a high level of productivity. They rank fifth, sixth and seventh on the team in scoring and average a combined 18.6 points. That isn’t all bad.

What they’ve shown is that none is ready to rush out the door into the NBA draft, but there have been enough flashes—such as Tarczewski’s 10-point, eight-rebound performance Thursday against Washington’s 7-foot senior Aziz N’Diaye—to believe next year’s team is extremely promising and that consistency might arrive in time to propel this team deep into March.

For Lyons, though, there is only this one last opportunity. He played in the Sweet 16 twice at Xavier and was a redshirt while the Musketeers played in another in ’09, Miller’s last year coaching Xavier before moving to Arizona.

"For him to go to a third Sweet 16, that would be a heck of a story,” Miller said. “I think he’d really get a lot of credibility for that."

Miller played for a Big East champion Pitt squad in 1988 that had Final Four talent but blew a late lead to Vanderbilt and lost in overtime of a second-round game. He knows how fleeting these opportunities are.

“He’s got about 6½ weeks left. You know how fast these weeks go—and we’re going to be at the conference tournament,” Miller said. “He’s built up some equity here, but it’s going to come down to how he finishes and how we finish as a team.”